


Inner Warmth

by prettysky



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, But it has happy ending, F/F, They're idiots in love, a lot of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-01-11 22:27:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18433376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettysky/pseuds/prettysky
Summary: You remember the first time you felt her hands. They were a little coarse, working hands, hands you knew at that moment you wouldn’t forget. Warm, pleasant hands. It made your skin shudder.You feel her hands now, and they're not warm anymore.\\things have to get worse for them to be better again.





	Inner Warmth

**Author's Note:**

> hey hey
> 
> so this is something i've been working on for quite a long time. today is the Big Anniversary so i figured it's a good time to finally put it up :) 
> 
> i want to say that this piece is written in a way i've never tried before, for all kinds of reasons. i took a little bit of freedom with the way i wrote this one and i just hope you'll like the result :)
> 
> i also want to say a huge thank you to liz (she's thighlerleigh on twitter and sleepy-platypus on tumblr) who did my beta for this one, made me use capital letters (yikes) and called me out for using the word moist. i changed it, for the sake of the friendship. thanks lizzie x
> 
> and last but not least - TW: cancer 
> 
> NO DEATH I PROMISE ONLY HAPPY ENDING SANVERS

You remember the first time you felt her hands. They were a little coarse, working hands, hands you knew at that moment you wouldn’t forget. Warm, pleasant hands. It made your skin shudder. It was when you helped her get up from the floor and she stood, your hands still inside hers, and she gave a brief, grateful squeeze, leaving after a moment.

You feel her hands now, and they're not warm anymore. You have a nervous lump in your throat, refusing to crumble. It continues to be stuck there while you feel her cold skin, trying to warm them yourself. You're not sure you can; all of your warmth comes from her.

You don’t remember the first time you saw her. She was always there, in the classroom, in the hallway, with her friends, and you were in all kinds of other places. She always sat at the table by the window, in the back, and you at the first table, in front of the teacher. You don’t remember all the times she talked in class, probably answering some clever or sophisticated answer, while you were busy writing the teacher's words, as they are, not even thinking about contradicting them. Later, she told you the secret.

"It's simple, Danvers," she said. "Only trust yourself."

You were a good student. You did what everyone told you to do, always. You never thought there were other ways you could go, ways you weren't offered. You didn’t know you were allowed. She was the one who taught you that.

You do remember the first time she turned to you. You remember brown, bright eyes, a slightly haughty smile. She was wearing a denim jacket and yellow T-shirt that was a bit tight, and you remember thinking how flattering it was, how well it was fitting her. You didn’t really think those exact words, but you had a feeling of butterflies in your stomach, slight dizziness in your head. You remember thinking, Why is she talking to me?

"Danvers," she said, and you tried to remember her name while your hair fell on your face. You deflected it, your mouth slightly opening in surprise.

"Sawyer," you recalled at the last second, and she smiled, one dimple on the left side more prominent than the other. You remember it made you smile back at her, without even noticing. You don’t usually smile just like that, especially not to someone whose first name you don't remember.

"Do you have a partner for the history project?"

You froze. The project was in pairs, but it was also possible to do it alone. You usually did your own projects. You had friends, of course, but they were Kara's friends: Winn, Lucy, James, Lena. They were all in Kara's class, and you hung out with them only when they came to your house. In your class there weren’t many people you could connect with. It didn’t bother you. Most of them were infantile douchebags as it was.

Not the one in front of you, though. She looked sharp, smart, even... kind. You wondered why she offered to do this project together, what she thought to achieve, what she wanted to achieve.

Maybe she just wanted to do this project with the class's nerd, to get a better grade. You didn’t take interest with other people's grades, just yours. But maybe she wasn’t as smart as she looked. Maybe she was planning to get a lift from you.

You were going to tell her you’re not interested and leave, but she looked at you expectantly, waiting for an answer, and she had something in her eyes that made you wonder if it’s hope, or maybe something deeper than that.

Suddenly you found that even if she did want to get a lift from you, you didn’t mind giving it to her.

"No, I don’t," you heard yourself say. She widened her smile.

"So what do you say we do it together? Everyone is too talkative for me, I need someone to focus on the work."

Now you truly smiled, of your own accord. What’s better than a partner who’s devoted to work just like you? My, you thought then. She came in just in time.

You didn’t know how right you were.

You came to her that very day. You had decided to do the project about Ancient Rome, a subject you both found interesting enough to explore, but not something that either of you had been passionate about. Her house wasn’t far from yours, as it turned out. She told you to come from the side entrance.

"My room is on this side of the house," she said, a little apologetically. She let you in through the small, pleasant-looking door right into a small kitchen, probably side to the large, central kitchen. Another door was on the side, which turned out to be the entrance to her room.

"I have my own kitchen and bathroom. My parents travel a lot for business purposes, and the cleaning lady comes once a week to dust here and there, but this whole area is at my disposal." She smiled at you, her eyes shining again. You smiled back at her, a little embarrassed, wondering where to sit in this big room.

Finally you both sat down on the carpet with books, notebooks, and pens spread out in front of you, her laptop laying on her thighs. You remember how she leaned her back against the bed, energetically typing whatever you told her to write, offering various additions and corrections, which she had permitted or dismissed, and then went on.

She never contradicted you. Even when she didn’t agree, she just said her opinion, without canceling yours. If you made a mistake, she hinted gently. She always listened to what you said, and after a few moments she answered, a calculated, thoughtful answer. You found more than once that you had nothing to reply. You wanted to try it, too, to make comments that were so precise, so calculated, unanswered. She made you want to change yourself, to be better. To be like her.

You felt she was challenging you. More than once, in discussions of the material you learned, there was a little deeper talk between you two, intelligent arguments, and wits that jumped from one to the other. You found yourself staying up late, day after day, until someone (she, always she, never you, you couldn’t get tired of her even if you tried) would yawn, close the laptop, and murmur in a sleepy voice, “It’s getting late, if you want to sleep, there's a blanket in the second closet on the left," and just like that, would lie on the bed in her clothes, falling asleep in seconds.

It took you once or twice to realize that when she tells you that there's a blanket in the second closet on the left, that means she's inviting you to sleep with her. Probably here, in her huge bed, in her huge room. When you understood that, you blushed to the roots, but you didn’t dream of sleeping with her in that bed. You just packed your stuff and turned off the light in the room, stepping out of the plain white door.

"Did you know that flamingos’ tongues were considered a delicacy in Ancient Rome?" she told you once while you tried to find a source in one of the pages you held. Well, you weren’t really focused because her foot, lacking any uniqueness, touched the tip of your knee, and you tried to understand for fifteen minutes why your heart was beating so fast, and why your palms were sweating. She didn’t look up from the laptop, but the usual little smirk was spread over her lips.

"No," you answered, wetting your lips, snickering. "Are you looking at interesting facts about Ancient Rome?"

She didn’t answer, raising an eyebrow.

"The Roman emperors," she continued, "poisoned themselves every day. From the end of the first century AD they adopted the daily practice of taking a small amount of any known poison in an attempt to obtain immunity. Even though the habit was effective against certain types of poisons, it didn't work against all of them. In practice, it turned out that the habit could lead to a lethal accumulation of poison in the body." She raised her head, her eyes laughing. "It's much easier to just put on a label that says ‘poison’ and tell people not to eat it, isn’t it?"

"I guess you're right," you said, going back to your pages. Her leg moved slightly and you managed to concentrate on what was written in them again, continuing to dictate to her.

You finished the project ten days before the due day, but that didn’t stop you from keep on coming over three or four days a week. You talked about everything: cinema, literature, theater, politics, astronomy. You gave her Adams and Dickens to read and she brought you Austin and Christie. She showed you Gone with the Wind, and you showed her Fight Club. You read together, or separately, discussed selected paragraphs. You saw old movies together, analyzed them together in great detail. Often, during a discussion, she would go to the kitchen, starting to cook. She’d make fried eggs with extras, or noodles, or salad in a large bowl. She liked fresh food, and although you'd told her time after time she didn’t have to bother, that you could order pizza, she always shrugged.

"I like making food for you, Danvers," she used to say, smirking. "You have a very good palate."

It was something that always made you blush, and you hoped that she would be too concentrated in the dish on the gas to notice your red face.

True, you liked watching her cook. You would sit at the table, drink a glass of cold pineapple juice, and you both would chat about the last book you read, or about the movie you were about to watch, or listen to a podcast on topics like evolution or cultures, only the sound of people talking echoing through the iPad and both of you listening, exchanging looks once in a while. She fried, mixed, chopped, and you with your foot on your knee, the glass empty in your hand. You watched her move, the line of the jaw curled up to the ear, hair pulled back into a bun, careful, quick, skillful hands, a whistling sound through pursed lips, everything made your stomach swell, and your head became confused.

Sometimes you felt like the emperors of Ancient Rome, taking a small dose of poison every day, waiting to be vaccinated. Expect to get up in the morning, to be invincible.

You soon learned to feel at home. You would take off your shoes, sit on the bed, get food out of the fridge. Once you came in without knocking and went straight to her room, discovered her meditating in a yoga session, legs folded. She opened one eye, smiling slightly.

"Join me, Danvers. It clears the head.”

So you sat like that, with your legs folded, maybe half an hour before you decided you couldn’t do it anymore, and got up to pour yourself some juice. She laughed at you after that, and you both set to watch another classic bad movie (maybe it was Escape from Alcatraz that both of you spent half an hour afterward detailing what you could do instead of wasting your time on this piece of crap). It was one of those times when you laughed so hard you couldn’t control yourself, and her head then rested on your knees, all radiant with joy.

You two just couldn't stop talking. It was like opening up a fountain of thoughts, ideas, opinions, flowing into each other like rushing water, discussing endless things, from subject to subject to another one, for hours, you just talked to her. You remember it well, that year. You felt sharper than ever before, and you knew she was causing you this, that she was giving you that vitality, that spark you didn’t know a person could feel.

It took you a while. It took you an entire year, maybe more, hundreds of visits to her house, dozens of fried eggs, cut thin salads, countless discussions about classics and podcasts and various subjects. But after you changed your outfit for the fifth time before you got there and got confused on the way back home because you thought about her voice (sometimes floating, sleepy, high, and sometimes sharper, defiant) and you felt all the unbearable stomach fluttering whenever she touched you, or when you watched her fall asleep, or when her damned dimples glowed at you, it took you all that time. That's quite a lot, and you were pretty dumb.

But in the end you realized that you were in love with her, completely, and at a level you couldn’t understand for yourself. It was something that was inside you for a long time, something you couldn’t, or didn’t want to name, and finally, you realized it was there, like a tumor.

Like the emperors of Ancient Rome, you woke up one morning expecting to find yourself immune, and discovered that you had a whole hoard of poison in your body, and it penetrated every corner, every tissue and cell and bone, poisoning everything with the sweet, sweet scent of oranges and caramel. Like poison, it might kill you. Unlike poison, you didn’t think there was anything that could make you feel more alive.

But she wasn’t yours. In a way, she was, sometimes messing your hair affectionately, or looking expectantly to see the expression on your face when you tasted something new, or when you two agreed on a subject and she was silent at last, tilting her head to one side. All these moments, they were yours. Yours and hers.

But she already was someone else's. Of several someone else's. She seemed to know more than you did about herself, and despite all the hours you spent talking about every subject in the universe, you didn’t have the chance to talk about this.

You saw someone coming out from the front door as you came in through the white door. She was a little taller than you, and with blond, shiny hair, and you thought you saw a spark in her eyes as she stood on tiptoe to kiss her goodbye, parted from her at the door. You didn’t even think about how she was leaving because you were supposed to come. You ran away quickly, quietly, you went back home. You sent her a text that you weren’t feeling well.

They continued to come, no matter how much you tried to ignore. After you, before you, in the hallway, at recess, at the park. She would say goodbye to you with an apologetic smile, a pat on the back. She’d go to whoever it is, continue without you. Sometimes you were the one who had to leave, clearing a space you didn’t know you'd caught.

You were afraid to speak. You didn’t want to destroy anything. You two had something so good that sometimes seemed strong enough, but at the same time too fragile for just one breath to break. You were afraid to make a mistake.

You continued to hope, you continued to dream, and yet you didn’t dare to let it go, because what if it's not. What if you were wrong. What if it would destroy everything. If you'd talk, everything could go down, and you won’t listen to old Simon and Garfunkel songs or to Chopin's pieces together anymore, lying on the green carpet, and you won’t see old French or German movies, talking for hours afterward with exaggerated accents until one of you bursts out laughing, and you won’t taste the things she cooks for you, and you won’t see how she puts on perfume before she leaves the house. All this will be thrown out like a rotten bone and you'll be alone again, the school nerd, the one Maggie Sawyer has thrown aside. The list of possible losses was dizzying, and the fear of failure was so palpable, so you continued to thwart everything, and hold everything in your belly, and never dare to say anything, and she was still so beautiful, and never entirely yours.

You bought clay. You started to drown yourself in it. You sculptured whatever you could, especially people. Fleeing people, crouching, flying, crumpled, free. You sculpting yourself and her in so many shapes and sizes and types and painted everything in bright, sharp colors, putting everything as a dazzling exhibition on your windowsill, on the bookshelf whose books have been removed. For months you have done nothing but sculpture, reading, and silence. You've done a lot of silence. You didn’t dare to cry.

You remember when Kara entered the room. You lay on the bed holding a dark brown figure, the exact color of Maggie's eyes. It was a faceless woman, shackled in a nightgown. You have no idea how you managed to do it, only that you had a shapeless lump, and the next minute a crazy woman. You didn’t look at Kara as she closed the door behind her, as she sat carefully beside you on the bed.

"You want to talk?" She said, glancing cautiously at the defiant exhibition. You shook your head no.

She lay down beside you on the bed, curling up like she used to do once, to a ball, with her legs pressed against her chest, and you, without thinking, wrapped yourself all over her. You thought, I used to be her protector; today she doesn’t need me.

She released after a few moments, and you found yourself in the opposite position; you curled up into a ball, your head clinging to your knees rising, and she wrapped you in her warmth, with her long arms.

"It's Maggie." You heard yourself say, and she sighed.

"I'm sorry," she said, and you knew you didn’t have to say another word. You lifted your head, looking at her, and her eyes were as soft as the upholstered walls of the room where you locked yourself, and she kissed your forehead, and you let yourself fall apart for the first time.

"Hurts," is all you could say, while Kara's hands caught you from smashing to pieces on the floor of your room.

You knew you'd better suffer than give up on her.

So you kept on being friends. She would compliment your sculptures, all your creations, she would sometimes make one or two of her own, or paint yours, her brush strokes delicate on the hard matter. You continued as usual, holding a sack of knives in your stomach. You once heard her talk to one of her girls and her voice was foreign, like a language you didn’t understand, and you wondered how a person you knew so well actually don’t know anything about you, and you didn’t know anything about them.

You remember going out once. It was a party where you didn’t know anyone, probably of some other school, of a bunch of other teenagers, all terribly similar to those in your class and yet they weren’t them. You let yourself dance, go crazy, drink whatever drink got put in your hand. The air was so full of fog and music and shimmering darkness, and suddenly, delicate, soft hands rested on your hips and lips on your lips, and you felt yourself giving in to the feeling, as if that's what you were looking for all this time, hands holding curved waist and hair swirling in your fingers and an inviting mouth enveloping yours, that thing you tested for the first time in your life, a question mark straightens up to an exclamation point, the reversal of a doubt, you found the answer. You knew it was desire.

But nothing happened. You left that girl after a few moments, not letting yourself give in to it too much. You knew you wanted this, but from one girl only.

Everything was normal. Another year passed, and a few more months, and you reached the high school graduation ceremony, and she cheered for you when you received the certificate of excellence, when you said meaningless words as the winner, and you two went together to a party where everyone got drunk for no reason beyond the fact that it was customary and she danced with Kate or Shila or Cally, you couldn't really follow the names. She drifted apart and you couldn't see her from a distance, and you walked away.

She went to a good college. She's studying for a degree, not yet sure what she wants. You had other plans.

You remember Kara's face when you told her.

"Italy?" She asked weakly, wide-eyed. She didn’t need you, and yet there was an expression on her face, as if she lost a precious object. She knew there was no point in standing in your way, knowing she had to wait on the sidelines until the storm passed. She nodded at you eventually, trying to swallow her tears. You knew you couldn’t stay here for one more minute, that there, in the mountains full of artists, the solitary creators, you could find a cure, or at least look for one.

Maggie was angry. You didn’t answer all her claims that were hitting you one after the other, like train cars, numbered, calculated as always, like clauses in a contract. You heard a plea in her voice, which she quickly disguised, but there were things that even she couldn’t hide from you.

"I can’t take it anymore," you said, eyes staring at the green carpet you were sitting on. You heard her sigh.

"I don’t understand, Alex. What do you mean? You can’t go to college? You can’t stay in this town? You can’t what? What do you feel?" She was worried about you, and you wondered what else was hiding deep down, if she was hiding at all.

You didn’t answer.

She got off the bed after a while, sitting down next to you. She touched your hand, and you swallowed again, dizzy.

"I won’t stop you from doing anything, you know," she murmured. "But, I'd like you to stay here with me."

You haven’t answered yet, but thousands of thoughts ran back and forth in your head, and you tried to arrange them so that you could get up, walk away, escape to the other side of the ocean. You removed her warm, intoxicating hand from your hand. You left, you didn’t look back.

You met Alphonse. He was a tough man. At first, he didn’t even let you touch his statues. Not even sculpt yourself. Not in marble, not in clay, not in anything. You swept the studio, made him coffee and tea and herb soup, you cleaned the windows, the terrace. After that he let you clean the statues, wipe the dust that created from their quarrying. He was one of the most talented artists you've ever seen, something you hoped to reach to its ankles one day. You scrubbed the sculptures to shining reflection, seeing your tired eyes everywhere.

He had a daughter. She was tanned and round and full of grace, and she always wore crop tops that showed her inviting curves. She wasn’t anything like Maggie, and maybe that’s exactly why you let her take you by storm. In the days, you cleaned the studio, which seemed to get unrecognizably dirty each time you did it, and in the nights, you let Georgina peel off everything from you, you gave in to her fingers that gave you once again, a new feeling, and you found that for several hours every night you managed to steam Maggie out of your head, along with the smoke rising from inside you. Georgina was sweet and sensitive and didn’t know a word in English, and that’s what made it all easier; you didn’t have to talk, just feel. One evening, she pointed to your messy, tangled hair, nodding her head questioningly, and you didn’t think for a minute, agreeing immediately, and she cut it all off and left with a shaved head, a free body.

Two months went by, then another month after that, and all this was the longest time you hadn’t talked to Maggie since you two met. Time went on, you sent her emails, and called, you even asked Kara, with whom you spoke every other day, to tell her to talk to you. You wanted to tell her that you’re sorry, that you were choking, that you just couldn’t stay there, and that’s why you ran away. You wanted to ask her to not be angry at you, to tell her that you miss her. But you couldn’t. You hoped that Kara's careful words would tell all this for you. You began to sculpt, under Alphonse's harsh supervision, and in all your sculptures reflected sharp, intense emotions, everything you couldn’t articulate. He finally gave you a free hand, and you built a small town of white and gray and black, full of all your hopes.

She was everywhere. She was on the edge of the mountain to which you climbed every day. She was in the shower, she was on your balcony, she was in the studio, she was everywhere you looked. But she wasn’t there by you.

You came back in December, for the holidays. Kara came to pick you up from the airport, and you saw that she was holding her excitement, little sparks of joy breaking out of her, and she tried not to explode. She was so happy to see you again. You couldn’t lie, you missed her too. You asked her how everyone was doing, and how your parents were, and finally, casually, you asked how Maggie was.

You remember how she kept driving, hands clasped on the steering wheel. "Alex," she told you, in a voice you can still hear to this day. "Alex, Maggie... She, she's sick."

Five months. You go away for five months, and your whole world is turned upside down.

You took a shower, drank some water, and put on jeans and a T-shirt, and came to her, ready to scream at her to stop, to stop hiding from you, to tell you everything, one more moment of dishonesty and you could explode. You knocked on the white door, and your heart was in your throat, like a big rock.

You remember how she opened the door, her head shaved as yours, her eyebrows fading, but her eyes glistened when she saw you, just as only she knew how to sparkle, as only she could. You didn’t, couldn’t, say a word, and she pulled you to her, crushing you in a hug.

Your hands were wrapped around her, and you felt how fragile she was, how thin. You wondered what they had put inside her body, and wondered if she had anyone, even one person, all this time, who held her hand while she went through what she went through. You wondered if you would have been there, if even you could hold her hand.

You were still hugging, the door still open behind you, a draft wind blowing on both of you. She squeezed you a little harder, still silent. You haven’t exchanged a word in months. You didn’t know, until this moment, how you managed to hold out without her. You pushed her away a bit, pressing your lips against her forehead. She shuddered, and you reached back, closing the door. You stayed quietly, in the warm house. You managed to smell warm vegetables from inside, a soup maybe. Your lips are still on her forehead.

You remember how you started to go down to her nose, slowly, making yourself tremble. Her eyes were closed, and she didn’t move, letting you do what you wanted, what you've wanted to do for too long. Your palms gathered her face, holding them like water.

Your lips were a few inches from hers, but you didn’t dare. What if she’s not ready, or if she doesn’t want to, and what if and what if. All this anger inside of her, you couldn’t feel it, but you were afraid it was there. You pulled away a bit, giving her space.

"Moron," you heard her murmur, and she raised her head, kissing you.

That was all you ever dreamed of. You could swear that all your hopes, everything you ever wanted in life, felt just like this. She kissed you slowly, so deep you thought you'd faint from the sensation, and after a few seconds, when you heard her breathe and exhale and sigh and holding you tight, you thought maybe it's not all you wanted, maybe it's more, maybe it's much more than that and you knew, no, you prayed, that you deserve it.

She had a salty taste,one that you didn’t know could exist, and she was all so soft and still stiff under your hands, that on the way to her room managed to get most of her clothes off. You kissed her over and over and again and again on her mouth and cheeks and neck, and you thrust your hips up against her, and you heard her murmur and sigh. You wanted to cry with happiness, you wanted to be swallowed up inside her forever, the two of you in a secret alcove of your own, protected from the thorns of humanity 

Her chest stretched out before you, and there were signs, scars, the chemotherapy that slowly destroyed her body along with everything, the evil with the good, everything folded and collapsed into itself, not much left of her. But what was left looked at you with such astonishment, as if didn’t know that she didn’t know all of you, and now a whole land was revealed to her, after it was hidden under the bush.

You passed soft fingers on her scars, and there was silence, only breathing sounds, and you bent to shift your tongue over everything, to heal, hoping she wouldn’t know another moment of pain. You wanted to save her. You agreed to sacrifice yourself, if that was what was needed.

She was completely exposed, and her eyes glowed at you, and she giggled for a moment and you giggled back at her. You kissed her again, slowly, and she flipped you two over and kissed your neck, to your chest, to your protruding hip bones, sucking and wetting and moaning and you thought you'd come from all this alone. She inserted herself inside you, and you saw stars.

You remember how she got up to you, after a few hours, when you felt as if your heart wouldn’t stand it any longer, and she looked at you so deeply for so long. Her palm caressed the thorns on your scalp, all but sharp and prickly.

"You’re my first," she whispered, "You always were.”

You couldn’t answer, you didn’t know how to react. You didn't know how to express what you feel now that you know she loved you all this time. You surrendered to her again, and you became one entity. Her hands were trembling, full of questions, so different from Georgina’s knowing hands, and perhaps that's the reason you clung to her harder, closer, she was more real than anything you ever felt. She threw her head back, shaking, and you begged without words for her to live, to never leave you.

She brought your thoughts to life a little later, as you lay under the heavy blanket.

"Don’t leave," she whispered to you suddenly. There was a lump in your throat and you were afraid it would melt and fill your eyes with tears, but it stood there, stuck like a stone.

"Don’t die," you whispered back, burying your face in her neck, that felt like a warm fur in the snow for a moment. Your hand rested on her ribs, feeling soft scars again, and you ran your fingers along them.

She chuckled gently, her whole body moved a little. "You know I can’t control it." You could feel the brush of her lips on your skull.

You hoped that she would understand when you answered, your face still buried deep in her neck, unwilling and unable to look at her face. "Me neither."

Because it was true. You couldn’t stay there any longer. You were choking, and you left, but it wasn’t because of Maggie, it was because you couldn’t stay in this place, something pulled you, or rather pushed you away from here, and you craved to swallow new things, do whatever you weren’t told to do. You couldn’t stay here. You couldn’t follow the rules, you needed new rules. You wanted to want to stay, and you were afraid of what a new will would bring. And either way, how were you supposed to stay here now, to see her withering like this, to watch her die. You were terrified of having to stay here, after you experienced the mountain air above. She doesn’t need you. No one needs you.

"I don’t want to lose you," she murmured, her lips resting on the middle of your shaved scalp, breathing the lavender smell of whatever you were showering with. You shivered again, even though you were warm under the blanket with her.

You remember that you thought the next sentence should be, “You won’t,” but you didn’t say it. You couldn’t. You couldn’t guarantee such a thing. The moment passed, and you remained silent, holding each other until it was time to let go. Until you were able to release, a million years later.

She made you a hot soup with rice and vegetables and watched you eat with an appetite you didn’t have for a long time, and then you went back to bed, and the atmosphere, surprisingly, became lighter. You managed to make her laugh, and you told her about Italy. About Alphonse and his statues, and your statues, and the landscape and the mountains and the black coffee you got used to loving when you got up every day before sunrise, and she listened to every word, looking at you calmly, made the right comments when necessary.

You spent the day and the night and the day after together in the warm house. You slept beside her, as much as you could sleep. You kissed her again and again and again, before you fell asleep, long kisses, afraid to break her and still holding tight, maybe too tight. You asked yourself if all this would have happened if you hadn’t gone away, if she hadn’t been sick, and if you were her first by accident or by intention, because she was waiting for you. And if she waited, will she wait for you again, until you’ll manage to get back.

When you parted in the morning, kissing again by the white door, she put a hand on your neck, wrapping her arms around you. She watched you disappear into the wind that struck the house, the trees, whatever stood in its way.

When you left back, you gave her a clay statue, a flower painted in thin lines of white and brown and green and yellow and she looked at it for a long time, her chin trembling. She reached out, stroking your shaved head like a dog's fur, pressing cracked lips onto your cheek.

You went on polishing marble sculptures and doing more of your own, and Georgina came to you at night, shielding from the cold and silent, silent all the time. You missed Maggie's voice, missed the way it rose up while she tried to prove something, missed the seriousness of it, the way she held herself to burst out laughing, the enthusiasm she had when she spoke passionately about something good. You missed her so much, and you still haven’t been able to come back.

But she agreed to talk to you. You exchanged long emails, telling stories and experiences, discussing hidden meanings in the things you read, in things you heard, in things you saw. You didn’t have any books, at least not many, just an old copy of The Old Man and the Sea that she once lent you, and sometimes you smelled it to see if her smell had stuck to it.

You didn’t talk on the phone. Her voice was enough to get you back and you didn’t want to come back, not yet. You were scared. You read how she continues to get treatments, and her parents were there and weren’t there, and she was often alone, reading, sleeping, thinking. She thinks about you, you knew, though she didn’t say so. You didn’t tell her, I wish you were here. You spoke, in fact, as if nothing happened. And it was like breathing freely, but like inside a prison cell.

Alphonse began to flatter you, a few months later. Your work became sharper, more precise. You knew how to work, and you worked hard, and did the job right. It did you good, in the rain, the cold, or the blazing sun, you always worked and worked and worked, putting everything you had inside the things you created.

He offered you something, a few months later. He put up an exhibition, in New York, something serious, prestigious. You can sculpt for the exhibition, if you’d like. If it would be good enough. You were amazed, because he had never been so kind to you, and you began to think hard about what you would sculpt. It could have been a matter of the rest of your career from now on.

Sculpt me, she wrote to you. You wanted to chuckle. You wanted to laugh and hold her close to you and whisper to her that she was seared and stamped in every fiber of your being, that you no longer know what else to sculpt from her that you hadn’t sculpted yet. But she wasn’t near you, so you didn’t tell her.

Eventually, you sculpted yourself. It was milky, white marble, and you sculpted it slowly, moderately. On the face alone you worked for a month. On one shoulder, a week. The most time, of course, on the body itself, wriggling and loose and elusive. You worked from six in the morning until six in the evening, without a break. You slept for three hours, worked a little at night, drank what Georgina gave you to drink, stayed with her as much as you could, and went back to work. You have invested all of you in it.

Finally, it was ready. You called it ‘Inner Warmth’. You stood there in front of yourself, shining, a shaved head and hands on your stomach, while from your chest, your back, your entire upper body, a face, shoulders, a whole body peeped out. She, as shaved as you were, bursting out of you in a spectacular position. The way your bodies fit in, you couldn’t describe it any better.

Alphonse was stunned. You told him he was the one who taught you everything, but he pointed to the marble, shaking his head. "That, you, it's just you," he murmured weakly, in broken English. And then he went on in fast Italian, something you figured was connected to the exhibition and the statue and the cash he would make. You didn’t care about the money.

You invited her to the exhibition. She and Kara were to fly to New York, and you would arrive on Alphonse's plane, where he loaded all his belongings, suitcases, statues, and his daughter. And you, of course. You’ll meet them there, and maybe even make it to spend some time in a city you've never visited.

You wore a white buttoned shirt, a black jacket. Ironed pants. Georgina, in a shiny dress with a cleft to the hip, tied a tie to your neck, stroking your shoulders. You tried to smile at her, but she only passed a thumb over your smile, leaving after a moment.

Your phone rang, Kara on the line.

"Hello?"

"Alex?" She sounded nervous, frightened. "It’s Maggie, I... She vomited, and there's... There's blood everywhere, I-"

"I'm on my way," you said, and ran out.

The ambulance arrived quickly. You were already waiting for them at the entrance to the hospital, seeing Kara wearing a red dress, makeup, terrified. Maggie, five times thinner than you last saw her, her wrists bulging. Dressed in a tuxedo, even more elegant than yours. Gory.

You couldn’t move, you couldn’t speak. You couldn’t ask where they were taking her, and what did they do to her, and would she ever see the statue you made for no one and nothing in the world but her?

Kara hugged you, whimpering at your shoulder, and you still didn’t know what were you supposed to do when you get your heart ripped off of your chest and led into the operating room.

Kara explained everything to Georgina on the phone. Luckily, she was good at languages. You didn’t put anything in your mouth, nor did you get anything out of it. Kara walked back and forth, impatient, making noises and sighs between short sentences. Finally, she sat beside you. She fell asleep in a minute, her head on your shoulder.

Two hours later, the doctor came out, nodding at you. You put Kara carefully down on the chairs in the hallway and walked over to him. He let you into the room, putting a finger to his lips to signal that you shouldn't wake her.

She was covered with pipes and machinery and was as pale and bruised as you'd ever seen anyone before. Still, there wasn’t a prettier woman in the world. You sat next to her, taking her hands in yours.

You didn’t notice at first, but tears began to fall from your eyes, a torrent that you didn’t know how, and perhaps couldn’t stop.

They were so cold.

You stay there all night.

 

*

 

She wakes up the next day, around noon. She insists on getting out of bed, despite your protests.

"I have to stretch some bones, Danvers. A short walk to the end of the hall and back."

She gets up with effort, walking slowly, dragging the infusion pole after her. You walk with her to the end of the hall, holding her hand apprehensively. She might break every minute, and her fragments would spread all the way down to the reception, and you would have to gather everything in your hands, to get cut. She goes on walking, humming a soft tune, trying to stretch as much as she can. It seems that despite everything, it's good for her.

You help her lie back in bed and she still smiles. You shake your head at her.

"How can you smile right now?"

She tilts her head to the side, and your heart misses a beat.

"You're here," she says simply. Her hand finds yours. "I don’t care what happens from now on, as long as you're by my side."

Her hand is still cold, and you're picking it up to your face with both your own hands, pressing your lips against it. You blow on them, trying to warm.

"So when will I get to see the masterpiece you haven’t stopped working on in the recent months?"

You look through the window. "You're not leaving here until you're better."

She chuckles. "Alex, you know this is not something that will happen this week."

"I know, but I can’t see you like that, Maggie, you-" You swallow, trying to explain your pounding heartbeat when you think of scenarios in which Maggie's hands continue to be cold. You must heal her. You will donate her whatever she needs to heal, and as quickly as possible. But you know it's not realistic. Things like that don’t happen in two days. You shake your head again.

"What are we gonna do?"

She continues to smile that soft smile of hers, the one that breaks you.

"I’ll continue to get treatments. It could be helpful, it could not, but either way, I'll do anything to stay alive." She squeezes your hand a little. "And I... I don’t want to make you do something you don’t want to do-"

"No," you interrupted her. "From now on, I do whatever you tell me."

She shakes her head, smirks a little. "I just said it’s not something I want to happen."

"If you ask for it, it's not necessarily something I don’t want to do." You shrug. "So what do you want me to do?"

She lowers her head a little, plays with the thin blanket. "I'd be happy if you were by my side. From now on."

You nod, and she closes her eyes. "But not at the expense of sculpture, I don’t want you to stop doing what you like, what you're good at, just because I'm in the hospital."

You rub your eyes wearily, but immediately turn back to look at her. "I'll do whatever you want."

"I don’t want you to stop sculpting."

"I won’t stop. After this exhibition, I'll have a lot of money, I’ll go back home and sculpt there. I’ll be by your side.” You manage to smile a little now.

"But... what about Italy?"

"Italy will manage without me. It was fine before I came, and it’ll be fine without me now." Your smile grows bigger. Something in the understanding that you’ll be next to Maggie now, that you’ll be with her all the time, freeing you, giving you breathing space. You know the city will strangle you again, but Maggie will give you what you need. She’s all you need. You haven’t fully understood it until now, and the realization is like turning a switch in your head, flooding it with light.

She smiles at you again, and you bite your lips, trying not to cry. You climb carefully on the bed, lie down next to her. She turns over, lies on top of you, still attached to the tubes from every direction. It’s funny to her, and she lets out a free, happy laugh.

Kara comes in after a while, dressed in everyday clothes. She went through your hotel room to take your things, and through hers and Maggie's rooms, to bring Maggie her clothes and belongings. You get out of bed, you go to her.

"I'm sorry," is all you can say, even though you have so much to tell her. Thank you, for everything you do for me. Please, don’t hate me for making you go through this. Sorry again, thousands of times sorry, for everything you've already gone through.

But she frowns at you, glances at Maggie. "What's her deal?"

Maggie shrugs. "She got hit in the head."

"I can see," Kara says, looking back at you. It seems that Kara and Maggie talk to each other about you quite a lot, and that makes you wonder, but you don’t have time for that now because Kara wraps you in a hug, and you're crushed in her arms. She's strong, much more than you, but you welcome the touch.

"So what do you say we'll go to spend a little time outside? Not every day we’re in New York, you know."

A few days pass between the hospital and the hotel before you agree to Maggie to get out of bed, and with the doctor's permission you go out, the three of you, to discover every corner you can reach. You and Maggie kiss, on the bench in the park, in the cafe, in the middle of the street, on a horse-drawn carousel you're riding, both of you on one horse. You missed her so much, and her taste is quite different, something a little bitter, but still so full of her that you could burst, could fill up with her kisses alone. You hold her in your arms, feel the world stop. There’s nothing but her when she smiles against your lips. Kara says nothing, just pulls out her phone, takes pictures wherever she can.

You pass through the museum. A few days had passed since the exhibition opened, but the flow of people didn’t seem to get weaker. Nothing interests Kara and Maggie except for your statue, so you go straight to it. She looks at the marble you, at herself breaking out from inside, and you know exactly how she feels. She turns to you, and her eyes are damp. Luckily there aren’t many people around at the moment, so you let her kiss you, devour you, right there, and you’re not sure if someday there will be a moment that you’ll be fed up with her. You hold her closer, begging the universe not to take her away from you. She shakes like a leaf in your arms, and still cold.

You fly back home. Alphonse asks you - and you agree - to keep your statue at the museum, as long as you keep getting the profits from the display. You already getting a substantial amount of money, and on the flight back home you reserve the three of you to a first-class seat, repeatedly asking for more champagne and strawberries at the sounds of Maggie and Kara's giggles.

Maggie’s parents left, and they’re nowhere to be found. They had the courtesy to leave the house, one of a few they have, and a message, saying they can’t take it anymore, implying that they have more important things to do than to take care of their sick daughter. She can manage on her own, they said, the house and some money will be at her service. She’s not mad, but you are, shocked by the idea that these people can really see their daughter crumble in front of them and still give her none of their love and care. She calms you down, saying that you are all she needs. They are not part of her life, never really were. So you stay there, on your own. You sleep with her every night. If it's in her huge room, in her huge bed, with the device that helps her breathe at night beeps into your dreams, and if it's in the hospital, always on an armchair or on a folding couch, and sometimes with her in the hospital bed.

You continue to sculpt, but much less. You've found a small room that you rent, a place where you can put your tools and stones, and you're mostly working now with smaller things, learning to do miniature work. It's nice, like therapy, and sometimes you bring it to Maggie's house, and you work like that, while she's reading, or reading out loud to you.

You continue to have discussions, about everything, just like before. You used to think that it was impossible that two people could talk so much and the conversation would never end, but it turns out that there’s no subject in the world you two can’t talk about. You're by each other’s side all the time, which is so much more than before. So you talk and talk and kiss and make out and snuggle, and she cooks you rissole and rice and potatoes in the oven and pours cheese over everything and watches you eat with sparkling eyes. And you watch a bad movie and then a good movie, and talk about it, and talk a little more, and if she feels good enough you put your head between her thighs and make her moan in the most beautiful way a person can produce. You love her more and more every day.

And she loves you. You’re convinced that you are more fortunate than anyone you have ever known or heard about, but you're afraid that the moment will come when your luck will run out.

You sell the little sculptures you make, and you get enough money for an apartment and a car, and both of you go to live there. Maggie's house, it's too much for both of you. Kara comes to visit the first night, with a basket full of chocolates, and three of you spend the evening drinking and eating chocolates with quiet music and pleasant talk. You're still wondering when your luck will run out, and if it’s possible to feel that happy.

You shut your eyes tight one night with her divine fingers inside of you, and you groan and moan loudly, and she kisses you deeply, almost bites you, and you come around her fingers, wondering if your luck will run out tomorrow.

Or maybe a day after that.

Or the day after that.

She’s getting better. You're afraid you're using too much luck. You rattle with fear, every day you get up and see her face before anything else and you are terrified.

You tell her that.

"I know," she says. "It's inhuman to be this happy."

You're glad she understands you, and you think about how she's still sick, and yet she's happier than ever, just because she's with you. You bury your face in her neck so you won’t cry from looking at her. You know every wrinkle and crease and every dent and every freckle on her face, and you know every expression and movement her face makes at any given moment. You don’t need to look to know that she has a sad smile and that her eyebrows are curled in.

"But don’t think about it. You think too much, where are your rules?" She laughs at you.

You don’t raise your head. "You broke them all."

She sighs, reaches for your chin. She raises your head, looks you in the eye. She reaches for your short hair, which has begun to grow a bit, and becomes wavy, unruly. You never bothered to comb it.

"Did I now?" she mutters, and you kiss her, trying not to cry.

Your luck runs out when you’re, unsurprisingly, in your studio. She had one of her regular treatment appointments, and insisted that you take the morning to yourself. You can’t lie, sculpting brings you more happiness than most things on the planet - not including Kara and Maggie, and the mushroom soup she makes, and pineapple juice, and a good Tarantino movie. So you went to the studio, just for the morning.

You get a call from the nurse, and you're halfway down the stairs while she’s still on the line with you.

Remember - your luck will run out exactly when you won’t be looking. Because if you look, you will run right after it. It disappears quickly, slips off, and you're left with marble dust in your hands and a coat you're wearing inside out, taking a cab to the hospital, paying double to the driver to drive as fast as he can.

You wait outside, not long, and the doctor comes out to talk to you.

"It's not good," he says, taking off his glasses, sighing. "We managed to get out most of the fluids out of her lungs, but she needs to stay at the hospital until further notice."

You nod. He bites his lips.

"I'm afraid that if we won’t take more drastic measures, the situation could deteriorate quickly. I'm talking about a few months here, Alex," he says cautiously. You nod again. He doesn’t know, but inside you catch a racket and start breaking everything into pieces.

"What do you suggest?" You say in your most calm voice.

"Well, there's a slightly different treatment than we've tried so far. It's experimental, but it's the best option for you right now."

Kara appears at this moment around the corner and interrupts the conversation. You thank the doctor, and approach her, let the tears flow. You have to get them out before Maggie wakes up.

When she wakes up, the doctor appears and talks to you about the experimental treatment. You have to admit, it doesn’t sound very promising. Something with a new cocktail of drugs that you haven’t tried yet, that sounds like it's going to make her wilt like a flower, turn black, poisoned.

She doesn’t flinch when she looks at the doctor. "We'll take it,” she says, as if she knows that you too are sick, that your heart is about to fall out, just like hers. Your hands are intertwined throughout the entire time, and the doctor looks at the two of you, nodding.

"We'll start as soon as possible," he says, and leaves the room.

She stays in the hospital for observation, and gives fluids and tests to every nurse who enters the room, and sleeps most of the time. The surgery had tired her, the doctor told you. It gave you permission, even if not formal, to go to sleep yourself. You won’t leave her any longer, not even for a few hours. You don’t want her to collapse right when she’ll have no one beside her. You can’t think about her losing consciousness, fluttering, falling, and no one comes to her aid. The thought brings tears to your eyes.

You spend a whole week in the hospital, continuing with tests and treatments. She starts the said treatment, and both of you try to be excited about it.

"You'll be out of bed in two months," you tell her, taking another spoonful of the jello. During your walks in the ward, you find the kitchen and take another two, one for you and another for Kara. Maggie already got one with her lunch.

"Two months? You mean two weeks," Kara says with her mouth full too. Maggie giggles.

"Tomorrow," she says, nodding. "I already feel how all this disgusting cocktail of drugs is fighting all my evil and sick cells."

"Blowing them out like Superman, bam, bam, bam," Kara giggles too, and they both start to laugh so hard that a nurse comes into the room to check that everything is alright. You sit between the two of them, giggling as well, hoping you will never forget their laughter and how the sounds of it fit together.

The cocktail doesn’t help. It does help, because the doctor tells you she’s better, but on the outside the situation only gets worse. She vomits every few hours, and can’t eat anything. She insists on getting up and walking around, or going to the hospital garden on foot, but even when you let her do it, she falls, too weak to hold herself. She's pale and her face is sunken, and she's still more beautiful to you than any woman you've ever seen, but your heart falls every time you find her asleep, afraid for a few seconds until you hear her breathing.

Her hands are still cold, all the time.

"Let's get married." She tells you. You look up from your book, not sure you understand what she means. You sit on a park bench next to the hospital, breathing some fresh air for once.

She smiles at you, almost laughing. "I'm looking at you," she explains. "And I see my future. Whether it's six weeks or a year or a decade, I want to be with you for the rest of my life."

You put down the book. You want it too, god knows you'll give everything you have for her, but to get married?

"Why do we need to get married?" You say. "We'll always stay together, for better or for worse. We don’t need this meaningless piece of paper."

"I want this meaningless piece of paper with you." She says. You can’t resist her dimples, which you can barely see now, from the thinness of her face. You remember the full, apple-like cheeks she used to have, the light that lit them, and now all you can see are cheekbones sticking out on the skin, the light in her face struggling to stay lit. She's pale and bald and frozen and so, so beautiful, and you're willing to marry her, as long as you stay together for the time you’ve got left.

You marry after two weeks. There are a few friends there, a few family members, and some hospital staff, which in the recent time has become a bit of both. You were afraid that on the wedding day something would happen again, and you would have to watch yet again how Maggie, dressed in a tuxedo vomiting blood being taken to the hospital, but even luck seems to decided to visit your wedding. You walk along the aisle, your little sister puts her arm around yours, in front of a crowd of twenty or thirty people. You raise your head and see her standing on the edge, and she's formally dressed and made up and her face shines like the sun itself. You're dazzled, and maybe that's why you're crying.

"You make me live," you tell her, to the officiant, to the whole audience. You want to shout it from the top of the highest mountain, you want everyone in the world to know. "All I am is because of you. I am so proud and fortunate to call you mine."

You're usually afraid to push luck, but you think it'll let this one slip for you.

"You’re the reason I haven’t given up yet," she tells you, and you hold yourself from sobbing right there. "The reason I'm still fighting and will continue to fight, is for us, so we can be together for as long as we can. I'm proud of you, of what you are."

When you kiss her, she tastes like distilled hope.

The evening goes on pleasantly, you drink and laugh and dance a little, as much as she can afford. There isn’t a dry eye in the crowd when you give speeches, both of you, telling your story, the incredible puzzle you managed to put together from the broken pieces that were the two of you.

You're driving back to your apartment, spending the first night in a long time in your bed. You both have rings on your fingers, and when you get up in the morning, you find her sleeping more calmly than she has ever slept, and you're filled with warmth. Under the blanket, you two are close, and you can feel her warm again against you, and you sigh softly, relieved, and you kiss the ring on her finger.

She returns to the hospital. The doctor says that there’s excellent progress, and you watch, slowly, how the color returns to her face, how she eats solid food at last, how she manages to get up on her own. A few months later, she gets discharged home. She’ll continue to undergo treatment, but hospitalization is no longer necessary.

You continue to sculpt, but in the apartment. She likes to watch you work, says it calms her. She cooks and reads and exercise, but she does everything inside the house. Sometimes she goes out to the balcony to feel the soft sun on her gray skin. She takes her medicine every day. She’s still terribly bald. But she's better than she used to be.

You want to go back to the studio. At home you don’t have all the tools and materials so you stay there because she asked you to. But she’s better, and both of you have to get back to normal. Not to talk about how your money starts to run out because of all the treatments, and you must return to sculpting things people will want to buy. All the work at home, it's simple clay, just to train your fingers. You have to go back to the real work. You tell her that at night, and she nods and hums. She must be too tired, you think, and go to sleep.

In the morning you get up, get dressed, eat a bite of something and get ready to leave, but you hear a weak grunt from the bed and come back to her.

"Don’t go," she mumbles, still groggy from sleep. You smile and lie down next to her.

"I have to go to work."

"Don’t go," she says again, and curls up beside you, and you put your arms around her, trying to warm up, trying to warm her. You stay like that for a few minutes, and when you think she's asleep again, you try carefully to crawl out. She reaches out and grabs you.

"Alex," she almost whines, a voice that doesn't quite fit her. You sigh, lie down next to her again. You put your head in front of hers, trying to look into her eyes.

You don’t have a boss or an office or a pay slip, but you have a job, and if you don’t want the two of you out of this place in few months, you have to keep working. But she still won’t let you. You twist your mouth, raise an eyebrow at her. It's hard for you to look into her eyes. It's like broken glass; you see the glass scattering, the amber pouring out, flooding everything. You want to reach in and turn off the current, wipe everything, clean her. You put a hand on her cheek. You look at your wife.

She doesn’t have to say it aloud. You know.

You understand that she’s afraid that she’ll fall ill again, that she’ll start to vomit again unconscious, that she’ll be left alone again, and there will be no one to help her. She didn’t leave the house until now because of this paralyzing fear. What you wouldn’t give to stay there forever, physically, being in her presence all the time, but you can’t.

You also know that you did it to her. You’re the one who left her alone. The one who abandoned her. Because of you, she’s terrified of death, that no one will be with her when she falls again. You vow in your heart to never leave her again like that, to never make her feel alone.

"It's not far from here," you try to say. "It's only two blocks away. If you call, I'll be here in ten minutes. I promise."

She takes a deep breath, puts her face close to your chest. You sigh again.

She finally lets you go, after you've promised her dozens of times that you're only one phone call away and that you'll be back in a few hours. You don’t want to go just like she doesn’t want you to go, but you have to. She walks you to the door and kisses you deeply, hands on your shoulders, and you leave the house, her taste still in your mouth.

It goes on for a few days, and you kiss her and hug her and you're careful not to break her, and it seems like somehow, now that she's getting better, she's more breakable than when she was sick, and you wonder why, but you're silent. You bring back chocolates and snacks and the Chinese food from the restaurant she loves, and she smiles at you and eats it all carefully, and vomits only once in a while.

You love her more than anything, more than ever.

 

*

 

There’s something comforting in the next period. You will continue to go to the hospital for tests and check-ups, and you will continue to sculpt, and sell it all within weeks, with a dazzling success that you can’t seem to understand. You will move to a larger apartment, one that has a terrace with grass, and an adjacent storage room that you soon turning into your new studio. You'll keep talking and laughing and have dinners with Kara, and you'll open your very first own exhibition, and you’ll invite Alphonse. He'll pat your back affectionately, and pinch your cheek like you're six years old. You won’t mind. Maggie will wear a floral blue dress, and her hair, that has begun to grow a bit, will be gathered in a ribbon. Before she leaves, she will look at herself in the mirror and without a word she'll put her hand in places where her skin is falling or her body is too thin and she'll sigh, and you’ll go behind her and tell her that you haven’t seen how many people there are in the museum yet, but you can assure her that she’s the most beautiful of all. She won’t cry but she'll kiss you, and you’re the one who will want to cry.

You two will go to the hospital and the doctor will sit in front of you and smile a rare smile, and say that there’s a full remission, which means the cancer has gone. And probably won’t return. And of course there are few other treatments she needs to do to ensure that it won’t come back, and she’ll need to take medication for the next month or two, but she’s in good condition, excellent condition, and the treatment helped. She's clean. And you won’t listen to him anymore, just look at each other, and her smile will be worth all the suffering you've gone through, times a million.

That night she'll cook you a gourmet meal, and you'll lie on the couch after that and chat about things like dreams and losses and happiness, and she'll lead you to bed and make you happier than you thought you could ever be.

She'll be warm again, and you know that you'll cherish everything she has ever given you, or will give, forever.

You know that without her you were nothing.

You continue to create, and she, she is your fire.

**Author's Note:**

> please take the few moments after you finished to listen to [ this song ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyT5jMIaf90) and cry about sanvers
> 
> thank you so much for reading, i hope you liked it! make sure to let me know your thoughts :)  
> you can find me on twitter at bilerleighs and tumblr at bilerleigh
> 
> happy sanvers day :D


End file.
